Victim Theology: A Critical Look at the Church's Response to Aids

By Peter Mageto

Rarely does a book come along with a renewed understanding on the way certain issues are treated especially the Churchs response to HIV/AIDS. Other books talk about the social, economic issues in relation to HIV/AIDS, but this book goes further to show the theological basis of the churchs response. With evidence from the history of the main line churches, Mageto exposes the suppressed views within the mission churches on the HIV/AIDS. The book opens up yet another way of understanding the churchs response to HIV/AIDS so far and shows new ways of looking at the pandemic in particular those who are infected and affected.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 21, 2006
• ISBN: 9781467811972

Peter Mageto

Peter Mageto is an ordained Methodist Minister and has served congregations in Mombasa and Nairobi, Kenya. Currently, he is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Evansville, Indiana. He Serves also as Missionary-in-Residence at Aldersgate United Methodist Church and Methodist Temple in Evansville. He has widely contributed in theology, ethics and HIV/AIDS.

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© 2006 Peter Mageto. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 3/11/2006

ISBN: 1-4208-8255-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4678-1197-2 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2005908429

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

To my dear wife Gacheri

and our children Kaba & Nkatha

Acknowledgements

This book is a result of numerous individuals who sparked in me a theology that celebrates life rather than a victim theology that dehumanizes God’s people. I have met with those individuals in Universities, Theological Schools, Congregations, Conferences, urban centers and rural villages. Some of them are my own relatives; some are colleagues in ministry or institutions, while others are lay people interested in theology, ethics and the practice of ministry in HIV/AIDS era.

I take this opportunity to thank the following persons who read the entire or partial text: Dr. S. Bachir Diagne, Rev. James Steiner, Mark Wilson, Dr. Ken L. Vaux, Patricia Wilson, Dr. Esther Mombo, Rev. Dan Herndon, Rev. Saneta Maiko, Dr. Noel Leo Erskine, Dr. Brent Waters, and Dr. Khiok-Khng Yeo. I deeply appreciate their suggestions and support, but the opinions and ideas expressed in this book are solely mine.

I am also grateful to Dean George, Authorhouse publisher representative for the care given to this work.

I am especially indebted to my wife Gacheri and our children Kaba and Nkatha for their love, patience and understanding during the writing of this book. Thus, I dedicate this book to them

Above all, not by might nor by power, but by the Spirit of God, who was, who is, and who will be forever. Glory is unto God for the completion of this book.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

CHAPTER 1

Brief History and Theological teachings of the Church

CHAPTER 2

Dimensions of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic

CHAPTER 3

Critical Evaluation of the Church’s Response

CHAPTER 4

Beyond Victim Theology¹: Stigmatization, Discrimination and Gender Relations

CHAPTER 5

Toward the Future with HIV/AIDS: The Church’s Crisis or Kairos

Endnotes

Bibliography

Foreword

Peter Mageto’s book, Victim Theology: A Critical Look at the Church’s Response to AIDS, is the first significant theological treatise by an African Scholar on the issue of AIDS. Addressing the definitive religio-ethical concern of the twenty-first century with an ethical honesty and pastoral kindness, Mageto offers the global church a challenge to redress the injustice of centuries, which has established the seedbed of impoverishment, and economic exploitation, which has caused the pandemic.

The preventive and intervention remedies are now at hand along the opportunities to alleviate poverty. The book also encourages the African church with the admonition of mercy to shepherd the masses as they suffer and die.

Steeped in biblical wisdom and sharpened by acute theological insight, Mageto, one of the few-trained theological ethicist to prepare to teach in his native Kenya, brings knowledge of African studies from the renown program at Northwestern University to enrich his religious training.

The crisis of HIV/AIDS in Africa culminates centuries of theological history focusing the justice and mercy of God into frightful condemnation and yet epic opportunity. As world political leaders play out their pitiful token gestures to the AIDS epidemic, we are called to repent and prepare to meet thy God. Mageto’s fine study will facilitate a more excellent response to this beloved continent of the God of Abraham and Jesus Christ.

Ken L. Vaux, Th. D.

Professor of Theological Ethics,

Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary,

Evanston, IL, USA.

List of Abbreviations

AIDS – Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome

ATR – African Traditional Religion

CMS – Church Missionary society, London

GRID – Gay-Related Immune Deficiency

HIV – Human Immunodeficiency Virus

MMS – Methodist Mission Societies, London

MTCT – Mother-to-Child Transmission

NASCOP – National AIDS and Sexual Control Program, Nairobi, Kenya

PLWHAS – People Living with HIV/AIDS

UNAIDS – Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS

UNDP – United Nations Development Programme

VCT – Voluntary Counseling and Testing

WCC – World Council of Churches, Geneva, Switzerland

WHO – World Health Organization

Introduction

Christian teachings that focus on heavenly rewards at the expense of responsible living in the now and here, are what we call victim theology. In the HIV/AIDS era, victim theology has been highly characterized in Africa, without altering a rate of infection that continues to increase annually. The HIV/AIDS epidemic has become a focus for the church’s critical evaluation of her historical, theological, ethical teachings and practice of ministry. As a global new epidemic takes center stage, the church is now forced to analyze the historical forces that surround the planting of the church in Africa and especially the church’s teachings on the following three central correlated subjects: sex, disease and conversion. The teachings and notions that rise out of African traditional teachings and from colonial and neocolonial evangelists all point to the fact that for the church to be able to provide any creative and helpful prevention and care strategies, her historical background requires a concrete reconstruction.

The correlation between sex, disease, conversion, and HIV/AIDS prevention and care can no longer be underestimated. The correlation stems from the understanding that AIDS has been termed a sexual disease; it remains an incurable disease; and that the church has arguably presented conversion as the remedy for both sexual sin (deviant behavior) and divine retribution over a committed sin.

In order to underscore the background upon which the following chapters are grounded, a brief history of the arrival of the church in Africa and the theological teachings on sex, disease and conversion are analyzed in Chapter 1. The African traditional teachings amongst some communities are negative, and are highly exploited by the intrusion of colonial and neo-colonial evangelists.

In church teachings, (African) sexuality is presented as evil, dirt and promiscuous, which all holy Christians must avoid at all costs. Then disease is both understood as a curse and/or a divine retribution over a committed sin. Since in African traditional religion, there was no conversion, colonial evangelism introduces conversion as an ideal remedy for sexual perversion and health restoration only accessible through baptism, adapting a new English name and maintaining loyalty in denominational membership. All these perpetuate victim theology, which remains a major obstacle to the church’s response in HIV/AIDS prevention and care.

The national, continental and global epidemiological overview, with the origin, specific statistics, the impact and church policies to HIV/AIDS is analyzed in Chapter 2. The last two decades of HIV/AIDS in Africa have been marked with denial, silence and counter-blame over the origin of HIV/AIDS, which continues to perpetuate victim theology. Since the church has embraced the early propaganda that HIV/AIDS is a disease sent against homosexuals and/or prostitutes, it has elevated the church’s concern about sexual activity forgetting to address major co-factors such as migrant labor, poverty, freedom, equality and health care for all. This perpetuation of victim theology manifests itself in the impact that HIV/AIDS continues to cause in Africa whereby 3,000 people die daily from HIV/AIDS related illnesses, as well as the increasing numbers of orphans, widows and widowers, impacting the social, economic, political and religious spheres of life.

In Chapter 3, a critical evaluation is provided on specific aspects of the church’s response. The chapter provides examples of the Church in Kenya as she continues to remain silent, and how the power of silence equals death. The church’s theological teachings on sexuality, disease, conversion, sin, suffering and the practices of care and counseling remain judgmental, condemnatory and victimizing. In most of the church’s prevention and care initiatives, victim theology is overvalued against a transformative theology.

In order to help the church claim a positive position in responding to HIV/AIDS prevention and care, an attempt is made to crack down on victim theology. Chapter 4 picks from Chapter 1’s analysis of sex, disease and conversion in HIV/AIDS, and are now analyzed exhaustively in their major known characteristics of stigmatization, discrimination and gender relations. In short, the church’s teachings on sex, disease, conversion and HIV/AIDS continues to perpetuate stigmatization, discrimination, and the victimization of vulnerable women and men. This chapter vehemently and courageously faces the church head-on to untangle herself from a victim theology of sex, disease and conversion, which stigmatizes, discriminates and engenders all those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS.

Hence, Chapter 5 recognizes the need for a continued dialogue in unbinding the church from victim theology. The church must critically evaluate and overhaul her victim theological teachings that are a problem within and outside the church. Due to the intrinsic nature of HIV/AIDS as an issue that keeps manifesting itself in different ways, the theological-ethical recommendations are provided in the form of detours. They are detours because the church will be walking and working with both those in and outside the church, both the infected and affected by this epidemic. In conclusion, the church must remain alert and aware that the HIV/AIDS cure remains obscure, making prevention and care a high priority for every individual Christian and the body of Christ as whole, for the Alluta Continua!

CHAPTER 1

Brief History and Theological teachings of the Church

Introduction

Africa is the fastest growing Christian continent in the world. Over 330 million Christians live there. Within the teaming, bustling continent, full range of questions face the Christian church. The greater portion of the continent still staggers under the burden of colonialism¹ and disappointments of "flag democracy."² The opportunity to develop the resources of African nations for their own posterity continues to remain elusive, leading to unwarranted suffering of the African people. Thus, the dilemma created by HIV/AIDS estimated statistics is worrying as the infected and affected persons continue to rise.

The fact that many people remain as infectious carriers and yet they are not known is scary. The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa threatens to decimate the population, human resources for growth and development in a way that the slave trade or endemic and venereal syphilis did in a very few years. In HIV/AIDS experience, we are confronted with questions that reach to the foundations of our humanity, our relationship to God and to each other.

A critical evaluation on the church planting in the continent of Africa (though many examples provided in this book are from Kenya) provides an historical and theological background of the church in this region of the world. Often, churches in this region have not concretely and critically looked at their historical setting and how that affects their response to HIV/AIDS. The critical approach utilized in this book, unveils the strategies, methods and teachings that the colonial missionaries provided and how they have remained pillars in the construction of Christian faith. I am not trying to subject the missionaries and their work to a trial despite their weaknesses, we admire their courage and dedication³ in serving their masters, unfortunately, creating more vulnerability among the African people.

The African continent remains amorphous amongst many peoples of the world even in the 21st century. Different peoples use the name ‘Africa’ without understanding its meaning, origin or purpose. However, the progressive nature of new African scholarship⁴ points to the struggle of getting to know the African continent before and after foreign intrusion. The new African scholarship aims at the restoration of the African image which has been negatively distorted in major phases of Africa’s construction in past centuries as a large and complex continent with opinions, customs and beliefs as diverse as its problems,⁵ incomplete, mutilated, unfinished,⁶ and as a repository of death, disease and degeneration.⁷ This negative portrayal of the African as a person and as a continent was a major propaganda that the soldier, the missionary and the explorer were spreading. With the European ‘discovery’ (or re-discovery) of the continent in the 15th century, the African person, African societies and continent became historical under foreign colonization.⁸

The soldier, the explorer and the missionary labeled Africa the ‘Dark Continent’ whose future was to be salvaged by the European light of exploitation and domination, something that continues in the 21st century. However, it continues to be revealed in the HIV/AIDS experience that the ‘darkness’ of the African continent had more to do with the European intruders who knew nothing about the African peoples and their cultural practices. In perpetuating the notion of a ‘dark continent’, the foreign intruders sent propaganda reports back to their homes exaggerating the depravity of the African peoples whose redemption they saw as only achievable through education, medical care and evangelistic conversions.⁹ Consequently, Africa continues to remain the ‘Dark Continent’ in too many minds, a focus for fear as well as for romantic projection especially in the HIV/AIDS era.

The expansion of Islam at the end of the fifteenth century seemed to threaten the very existence of African Christianity. However, a different mood existed in Portugal as there were plans to pioneer naval exploits of Henry the Navigator and Vasco da Gama in undermining what Europeans conceived as the Muslim stranglehold in the route to the wealth of the Indies. In the 15th century, Christian missionaries reappeared through the Atlantic Ocean as European civilization emerged and enhanced its world expansion. Consequently, the missionary movement between the 15th and 20th centuries coincided with the formation of colonial empires of various peoples of Europe, whose warranty for the evangelization of the ‘dark’ Africa opened gateways to uprooting and planting simultaneously.

The Portuguese expeditions of Vasco da Gama sailed around the southern tip of Africa and up to the east coast in 1498. Portugal was more in search of gold and spices, and when their resources were exhausted, the Portuguese gave up Africa and left for the East Indies. The Christianity of western civilization followed it and changed the development process of Africa as it was fully fashioned in western civilization, which was ambiguous, feared, emancipating and enslaving. However, the African peoples did not understand that to entertain western civilization, there was no turning back. In the process, the Africans found pushed forward toward the unknown with hopes, whose fulfillment was through exerting foreign power by risking the known African worldview.¹⁰

Colonial and Missionary Scrambles: An Example of Kenya

Within the last five hundred years, many writers on theology, anthropology, and slavery have strenuously striven to place the African outside of the human family, as it was purposed and implemented by European colonial evangelists who believed that human beings must put the world in order through the compelling power of religion.¹¹ The disciples of these teachers also have endeavored to justify their views by the most dehumanizing treatment of African literature, religion and education, which have all been breached as the Good News of Christianity understood as piercing sword and a devouring fire of Jesus in whose name and banner (the cross) new colonies were to be established and its people subjugated.¹² The conquering for Christ was perpetuated in many different ways, such as in the study of languages, African dialects were scoffed at. In science, demonizing or bedeviling the African traditional doctors’ use of herbs and roots to heal eliminated the African from the international healing procedures. In geography, Africans were hated and subjected to a position of inferiority to the whites. While in history, the African had no place. In some sense, what was perpetuated against the African person remains as an obstacle in addressing HIV/AIDS pandemic today.

The disorientation detailed above provides us with a background to evaluate the pre-colonial times of the African peoples who developed specific procedures in order to maintain their well being. Africans knew how to balance their economic, social, religious and political needs to avoid misuse of resources and this was passed on within the family, an institution considered indispensable in all African communities. The family among African peoples is the essence of existence and the backbone of society because a person’s life force depended on the life forces of other persons and other beings. Thus, the African view of the universe contains the sacrality of life, respect for the spiritual and mystical nature of creation, and especially of the human person. The spirit of solidarity and interdependence gave Africans a sense of the family, community, solidarity and participation, for life is celebrated as the most valued of relationship among God’s creation.

In order for life to be experienced holistically, everything has to start at birth as a person belongs in a family. For example, if we were to take the Gusii people of Kenya, the process of belonging begins at birth. All members of the Omogusii family raise the consciousness of the child as a member of a family, and he/she begins to internalize its norms. In this way, the importance of a new arrival as a unique individual is reconciled with his or her belonging to an existing family and community, which not only decides his/her name but also has a duty to see his or her birth as a significant episode in the ethnic group’s existence. One would not marry nor divorce oneself from one’s family. Among the Gusii people, the family was central in shaping one’s life within the village and society. Each house has its own property. All family members whether living far or near were still united to their relatives remaining behind in the paternal or maternal home. Indeed, the above example of the Gusii people can be said of many of the African ethnic groups whose worldview is communal with respect to individual rights and responsibilities because, being for an African person is to belong and to belong is being.

Therefore, an African family and community is very important for the well being of every individual. For it is within this circle that insights, interpretations and opinions are tested. It is within the community that whatever ails the people is explored for restitution. No matter the consequences, African peoples in their cultures continue to resist extreme individualism, which degrades and fragments African values of well-being and undermines the essence of a humane setting.

The community consists of ancestors (living-dead), those living and those yet to be born. This inevitably reveals a fundamentally holistic nature of being African whereby life is to live in harmony with the past, the present and the possible immediate future on a human and natural level. If we note this holistic approach and contrast it with the Western idea of individualism, we can understand the role that Western Christianity played in introducing individualism among Africans. Christianity introduced individual convictions, conversions and accountability, which led the Church to become denominational clubs and not practicing faith communities. Christianity has embraced spiritual individualism with consequences in eternity, quite opposite to the African view, where individual acts have communal consequences here and now, and not only in the hereafter.¹³

Religion played a major role in shaping communal living. Every aspect of life among African communities is religious and religion is life. The drive towards life is the inspiration of African religions, often expressed in terms of identity, both individual and group, which is founded in reverent attitudes and practices of the ancestors, permeating all departments of life and well preserved in proverbs, rituals, oral traditions, ethics and morals of each community. Hence, to be without religion in an African setting, amounts to a self-excommunication from the entire life of society and this may explain why Christianity and Islam as foreign faiths continue to enjoy the fastest quantitative growth in the region. However, others interpret the current growth as a sign of how ready Africans were in deserting their traditional religions for the sake of new ones.

The church came into Africa when she (Africa) was ready for something new. In general, she was a land torn by ravages of the slave-trade and by inter-racial feuds, a land where diseases were gaining mastery and enervating or destroying human lives. Africa was seeking new or different ways of life. The traditional cults in their conservative forms were out-warn and, as practiced, appeared to have served their original purpose. Africa was yearning for something that she could not define and contact with the outside world began to give a direction and a shape to her yearning.¹⁴

From the foregoing, it seems that Africans were seeking something better than their own native religions. However, the argument fails to show the reasons behind Christianity’s failure to make followers a part from those who had been cut from society due to slavery and migrant labor. In most instances, those who became Christians first did not experience the new faith as liberating, but as one that exploited (if not all) some basic positive elements of African religions. The combined weight of colonialism, missionary proselytism and modern techno-culture, has profoundly disturbed African cultures. It is evident that in HIV/AIDS, many Africans know virtually nothing of their traditions (condemned as evil and dirt) as they continue either consciously or unconsciously to be influenced by Christianity or/and Islam.

The challenge that Christianity and Islam face is how to provide a holistic ministry that takes into consideration the role of African traditional religions among Africans. Most converts to Christianity will continue to revert to their old beliefs and practices for perhaps six days a week, and certainly at times of emergency and crisis. This uncertainty remains intact since the colonial missionaries legacy on the depravity of African souls to be rescued from eternal condemnation continue to be perpetuated in HIV/AIDS era. The rescue of the African means uprooting body and soul from all old customs, beliefs, and community by excluding him/her from the surrounding peoples and environment to keep the church against every imaginable expression of sectarianism. Indeed, any obstacle in the way of the church’s missions was to be trampled upon by colonial forces or forced conversions to avoid excessive punishment.

As in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, the planting of the church in Kenya has gone through several stages. First attempts made in the sixteenth century failed, although second attempts made in the nineteenth century yielded great results in the twentieth century. The motivation of missionaries to Kenya was that they saw the African primarily as ‘fallen’. Consequently, the planting of Christianity among Africans by virtue of their ‘fallen’ state and suffering reflects the victim theology approach of missions as expressed in the words of a Canadian missionary Otto Keller from the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada that, Here (read Africa) we see the power of the devil in an astonishing form, almost beyond belief. The noise of drunken men and women, fulfilling the lusts of the flesh come to our ears. All seemingly bond and determined to fulfill the cup of their iniquity.¹⁵ This representation of Africa and Africans was meant to lure supporters and fundraisers to keep the colonial evangelists at work in Africa. While the African peoples held their festivals in celebrating life, the colonial evangelists saw wickedness in all that constituted the African ways of living.

Finally, it must be remembered that the missionary societies at home employed powerful propaganda departments to raise their incomes: and through these the East African missionaries exercised a direct influence upon the ordinary church-going public…When they came to England on furlough, they spoke on public platforms up and down the country. If spiritual action was their object, material aid was their immediate need; and in framing their appeals, they naturally tended to dwell rather upon intentions than upon achievements…¹⁶

One way that this was accomplished to penetrate the ‘savage’ African soul was through the development of a different view of the African body as a means to curtail the body’s lusts, perceived to be the gateway to destroying the Africans. The colonial and missionary medicine served as a device of moral sanitation directed to the boundary between the African body and a surrounding space of customs, rites and superstitions.¹⁷ Once the missionary medicine demonized the African body and brought it under control, the missionary, the soldier and the explorer would engage in an unprecedented domination and expansion. This negative approach presented Africa as impure because of the practices of premarital sexual relations, concubinage and polygamy. Therefore, to curtail the power of the African body and take control of Africans’ lusts,’ Christianity presented an alternative thought: to be pure, superior and incomparable to none. To achieve this foreign alternative, monogamy was given first preference for all who desired to become Christians. Monogamy was presented as the gauge point in dealing with Africans’ lusts of the flesh (read human sexuality). In this way, monogamy became a pure mark of conversion, while polygamy was interpreted as refusal of conversion. Monogamy became a Christian characteristic to fight polygamists. Consequently, no one pointed to the Africans that the types of marriage the colonial evangelists were propagating, were only marks of a civilization¹⁸ and not the true marks of Christian faith. And since colonial evangelists found African customs ‘wicked’ and destined for conversion, the process of destruction begun aimed at breaking down the African celebrated environment.¹⁹

In Kenya, Johann Ludwig Krapf landed in Mombasa harbor in May 1844 to attempt mission work. Unfortunately, within a short period his wife and child died. Krapf had to request CMS for more support arguing "as the victories of the church are gained by stepping over the graves of her members, you may be more convinced that the hour is at hand when you are summoned to the conversion (italics mine) of Africa from its eastern side."²⁰ Krapf did not act differently from other missionaries around the African continent, who consciously or unconsciously served as agents of the imperial civilization, and envoy of God²¹, thus, dedicating himself to the conversion of Kenyans from a victim standpoint. Consequently, Church Missionary Society responded in kind to Krapf’s request and sent John Rebmann in 1846 and Erhardt in 1849 to